February 26, 1564

Christopher Marlowe (February 26, 1564 to May 30, 1593), was born months before Shakespeare. He was considered his rival in quality. The stories about Marlowe' life suggests biography overshadows fiction. But his plays, (Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, Edward II) are our concern now, and especially Dr Faustus. Below are bits from the beginning and end of The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. But first--there are comic interludes in this drama: like--A magician says to a clown:

'I will teach thee to turn thyself to any thing, to a dog, or a cat, or a mouse, or a rat, or any thing. 

CLOWN. How! a Christian fellow to a dog, or a cat, a mouse, or a rat! no, no, sir; if you turn me into any thing, let it be in the likeness of a little pretty frisking flea, that I may be here and there and every where: O, I'll tickle the pretty wenches' plackets! I'll be amongst them, i'faith.' 

We see in this next description, a playwright's vision of intellectual activity:

'Now is ...[Faustus] born, his parents base of stock, 

In Germany, within a town call'd Rhodes: 

Of riper years, to Wertenberg he went, 

Whereas his kinsmen chiefly brought him up.

So soon he profits in divinity, 

The fruitful plot of scholarism grac'd,  

That shortly he was grac'd with doctor's name, 

Excelling all whose sweet delight disputes 

In heavenly matters of theology; 

Till swoln with cunning, of a self-conceit, 

His waxen wings did mount above his reach, 

And, melting, heavens conspir'd his overthrow; 

For, falling to a devilish exercise, 

And glutted now with learning's golden gifts, 

He surfeits upon cursed necromancy; 

Nothing so sweet as magic is to him, 

Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss: 

And this the man that in his study sits. '

In conclusion, to Dr. Faustus:

'Such is the .... universal body of the law: 

This study fits a mercenary drudge, 

Who aims at nothing but external trash; 

Too servile and illiberal for me. 

When all is done, divinity is best: 

Jerome's Bible, Faustus; view it well.'